War on Tiny Houses for Homeless in LA

In the last few years proponents of the Tiny House Movement have reached out to their communities to provide safe tiny house solutions to address the growing homeless problem in communities across the nation.

Los Angeles is leading the pack led by Joe Buscaino who wants the tiny homes outlawed in his city as they set out to destroy tiny houses occupied by the homeless. Los Angeles city councilmember, Curren Price, refers to the shacks in his district as, “dog houses,” not fit for humans.

Local philanthropic tiny house builder, Elvis Summers assembled a team and set out frantically to pick up and relocate the temporary emergency micro housing to private land to prevent the city’s destruction of the tiny houses.

Summers started a Tiny House Project to address the homeless issue in the grater L.A. area and had placed some 37 homes, until Buscaino and the City of Los Angeles declared war on the tiny houses.

Sing Core has been a huge supporter of the tiny house movement to address the emergent shelter needs of people in housing crisis, including their Smallest House in the World $750 solution and donating 50% of their Sing Sandwich kits for building more significant tiny house solutions for qualified homeless organizations.

Mayor Eric Garcetti sees the tiny houses as more a nuisance, health hazard and not a solution at all.

The City of Los Angeles says they need $1.87 billion to address their homeless problem over the next 10 years, while in the meantime Summers is able to build tiny homes for about $1,200 in publicly raised donations via a crowd-funding campaign – at no cost to the city.

The city is in the process of passing a new ordinance making it easier to impound and destroy homeless people’s property, including tiny houses.

According to Summers, in January the city raised $12.4 Million in emergency funding for El Nino, here in March, they still haven’t done anything. “Where’s that money?” Summers says he could build over 11,000 tiny houses with that money.

All this while Austin, Texas as well as Charlotte, North Carolina and Portland, Oregon, have successfully established tiny house communities as a method of providing alternative housing for the homeless in their cities.